BEIJING - In Shanghai for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the three world leaders with the greatest leverage on Afghanistan and Central Asia - the presidents of the United States, Russia and China - will be meeting face to face. They will have more to discuss than just the future of Afghanistan. The future of Pakistan, and thus of the Indian subcontinent, is at stake.
Pakistan's fate has for 20 years been bound to that of restless Afghanistan. The destabilization of Pakistan would raise tension in Kashmir and in turn destabilize India. That could lead to war between the two countries, and if they resorted to their nuclear arms Pakistan would be shattered and become prey to fundamentalist forces eager to wage holy war against almost anybody. India, with a large Muslim minority and a militant Hindu nationalist wing, would then be in great danger of being torn apart.
The issue, then, is not simply to catch Osama bin Laden but to conceive a new balance of power that will ensure stability in the region, where Pakistan is the linchpin.
There are many ideas floating around about what to do with Afghanistan. The Russians seem to favor the Northern Alliance anti-Taliban forces and possibly also a partitioning of Afghanistan along tribal lines. Pakistan is totally opposed to the Northern Alliance, which does not represent the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan, and it also opposes a partition that would extend the Russian area of influence southward. Partition, while increasing the security of insurgency-torn states like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, would increase the danger of Pakistan being destabilized. The people of Pakistan feel Afghanistan is under their wing and any change to Afghanistan's borders, coming after the bombing of that country, would be perceived as a further insult.
The political role of the United States, with no physical border to secure, is indispensable - not only in regard to Afghanistan, but also to India, which should take coordinated steps to decrease tension with Pakistan and help to ensure the continued existence of its neighbor. In a way, the Afghanistan war could be an occasion for India to establish a new relationship with Pakistan, and to try to resolve the thorny issue of Kashmir and that of the contested border with China.
New Delhi does not want to talk to Pakistan about Kashmir, and sure enough, although China and India have different views about their mutual border, they agree that they must solve their internal insurgency problems without interference from outside. India has its Kashmir and China has its Xinjiang, and both countries will have to conceive new policies for their trouble spots and new strategies regarding the countries neighboring these trouble spots.
India has to recognize that Kashmir is a fundamental issue for Pakistan too, and that a compromise with Islamabad is necessary to resolve not only the issue of this northern province but also to stabilize Pakistan itself. Failing this, India itself is in danger.
For China, the issue of Xinjiang is different, less dangerous but possibly more tricky. There is no foreign country to talk to. Certainly Central Asia needs China for its development - this has been so for centuries - and China needs Central Asia to develop its land route to Europe, without which China will be pushed ever more eastward, to the detriment of its national development. Beijing has already seen the point of promoting the development of the western regions, of which Xinjiang is a part. However, it is impossible for Beijing to think of penetrating commercially into Central Asia without the active support of the Xinjiang Uighurs, who are in fact the ambassadors of China in Central Asia. There will be at least suspicion, if not fear or hatred of China in Central Asia as long as the Uighurs feel discriminated against or treated like second-class citizens.
In a way, the success of Chinese commercial and political penetration of Southeast Asia and Korea is due to the role played by the Chinese minorities. Beijing does not feel that the Chinese Dai, whose language and customs are almost identical to those of the Thais, pose a threat to national unity because of their intercourse with Bangkok. To the contrary, the presence of this minority brings the two countries closer together. The same is largely true for the Korean minority and the Korean peninsula. It is not important now to dissect the issue and see whether there are cases of split loyalties or similar issues. The point is that Beijing doesn't feel there are problems to its south or east, where its minorities extend China's reach and where Beijing's standing and political influence is generally acknowledged. The same is not true for Central Asia, where the situation has grown so awry that local Uighurs often feel discriminated against in favor of the ethnic Han, and the Han feel themselves discriminated against in favor of the Uighurs.
Here there are decades of attrition that can't be solved overnight, and there is also the fact that the Uighurs, like the Tibetans, have not come under the large umbrella of Chinese civilization that extended over Korea and to some degree also over Southeast Asia. However, the fact remains that without the Uighurs, China will be weakened in Central Asia and its hold on Xinjiang will come under new pressures. Newly wealthy Central Asian states under the American wing could exercise a potent draw on restless Uighurs unless they can be allowed to feel - like the Chinese Dai or the Chinese Koreans - that they are an integral part of Greater China.
China had early realized the centrifugal pull exerted by minorities like the Uighurs and the Tibetans, and tried to improve its policies toward them. In the early 1980s, then party secretary Hu Yaobang had ordered officials in Tibet and Xinjiang to speak the local language. However, the policy was soon revoked as Beijing felt that the new officials would draw those provinces away from the center rather than bring them closer to it.
Today the reality is different. The economy and the politics in Beijing are stronger and more democratic than 20 years ago. And whereas 20 years ago there was no real threat of divisive pulls from Central Asia, now there is a stronger possibility of this occurring in the aftermath of the Afghan war. In other words, Beijing could improve its policies towards those minorities, confident that its stronger centripetal pull would counteract the centrifugal pulls. If not checked, these centrifugal pulls, like the issue of Kashmir, could cause destabilization on a large scale, well beyond the present issue of Afghanistan. (2001-10-20 Asia Times)
